thing they said and did had the odour of fashionable life. Finding nothing further to interest my attention, I took my departure soon after coffee had been served, leaving the poet, and the thin, genteel, hot-pressed, octavo gentleman, masters of the field.
Melancholy Fate of the Indians.-C. SPRAGUE.
I VENERATE the pilgrim's cause,
Yet for the red man dare to plead :
We bow to heaven's recorded laws,
He turn'd to Nature for a creed;
Beneath the pillar'd dome
We seek our God in prayer;
Through boundless woods he loved to roam,
And the Great Spirit worshipped there.
But one, one fellow-throb with us he felt;
To one Divinity with us he knelt-
Freedom! the self-same freedom we adore,
Bade him defend his violated shore.
He saw the cloud, ordain'd to grow,
And burst upon his hills in wo:
He saw his people withering lie,
Beneath the invader's evil eye;
Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones!
At midnight hour, he woke to gaze
Upon his happy cabin's blaze,
And listen to his children's dying groans.
He saw, and, maddening at the sight,
Gave his bold bosom to the fight;
To tiger rage his soul was driven;
Mercy was not-nor sought nor given;
The pale man from his lands must fly-
He would be free-or he would die!
And was this savage? Say,
Ye ancient few,
Who struggled through
Young freedom's trial-day,
What first your sleeping wrath awoke ?
On your own shores war's 'larum broke?
What turned to gall even kindred blood?
Round your own homes the oppressor stood!
This every warm affection chilled,
This every heart with vengeance thrilled,
And strengthened every hand.
From mound to mound
The word went round
"Death for our native land!"
Ye mothers, too, breathe ye no sigh,
For them who thus could dare to die?
Are all your own dark hours forgot,
Of soul-sick suffering here?
Your pangs, as from yon mountain spot,*
Death spoke in every booming shot,
That knell'd upon your ear?
How oft that gloomy, glorious tale ye tell,
As round your knees your children's children hang,
Of them, the gallant ones, ye loved so well,
Who to the conflict for their country sprang!
In pride, in all the pride of woe,
Ye tell of them, the brave, laid low,
Who for their birthplace bled;
In pride, the pride of triumph then,
Ye tell of them, the matchless men,
From whom the invaders fled.
And ye, this holy place who throng,
The annual theme to hear,
And bid the exulting song
Sound their great names from year to year;
Ye, who invoke the chisel's breathing grace,
In marble majesty their forms to trace;
Ye, who the sleeping rocks would raise
To guard their dust and speak their praise;
Ye, who, should some other band
With hostile foot defile the land,
Feel that ye, like them, would wake,
Like them the yoke of bondage break,
Nor leave a battle blade undrawn,
Though every hill a sepulchre should yawn-
Say, have ye not one line for those,
One brother-line to spare,
Who rose but as your fathers rose,
And dared as ye would dare ?
The Future Life.-W. C. BRYANT.
How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps
The disembodied spirits of the dead,
When all of thee that time could wither, sleeps,
And perishes among the dust we tread?
For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain
If there I meet thy gentle presence not,
Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.
Will not thy own meek heart demand me there-
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given ?
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer:
Shall it be banished from thy tongue in heaven?
In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind-
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
And larger movements of th' unfettered mind,
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
The love that lived through all the stormy past,
And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last :
Shall it expire with life, and be no more?
A happier lot than mine, and larger light,
Await thee there; for thou hast bowed thy will
In cheerful homage to the rule of right,
And lovest all, and renderest good for ill.
For me the sordid cares in which I dwell
Shrink and consume the heart, as heat the scroll;
And wrath has left its scar-that fire of hell
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.
Yet, though thou wear'st the glory of the sky,
Wilt thou not keep the same belovéd name,
The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye,
Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same?
Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home,
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this-
The wisdom that is love-till I become
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss?
Satan's Reproof of Beelzebub.-MILTON.
FALLEN cherub! to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering; but of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see! the angry Victor hath recall'd
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of heaven: the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn,
Or satiate fury, yield it from our foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves:
There rest, if any rest can harbour there ;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy; our own loss how repair;
How overcome this dire calamity;
What reinforcement,we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.
The Pilgrim Fathers.-JOHN Pierpont.
THE Pilgrim Fathers,-where are they?—
The waves that brought them o'er
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray
As they break along the shore:
Still roll in the bay, as they roll'd that day
When the Mayflower moor'd below,
When the sea around was black with storms,
And white the shore with snow.
The mists, that wrapp'd the Pilgrim's sleep,
Still brood upon the tide;
And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep,
To stay its waves of pride.
But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale
When the heavens look'd dark, is gone ;-
As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud,
Is seen, and then withdrawn.
The Pilgrim exile,-sainted name!
The hill, whose icy brow
Rejoiced when he came, in the morning's flame,
In the morning's flame burns now.
And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night
On the hill-side and the sea,
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